Stephen Powell put forth on 4/29/2010 8:50 AM: > I agree with John. Stan must hobnob with an elite crowd.
Not really. A computer educated crowd maybe, but by no means elite for most definitions of elite. > I don't > have a UPS at home either, and I don't know anyone that does. Be the first. Even something like this will get you through browns and sags without a burb from the PC, and will give you 5-20 minutes to do a proper shutdown with an average mini tower in the case of total outages due to the occasional storm or line crew replacing a transformer, etc. Less than $50 at WorstBuy: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/CyberPower+-+425VA+SL-Series+Battery+Back-Up+System/6201585.p?id=1069297060711&skuId=6201585 A better choice IMO would be something like this: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/APC+-+900VA+Battery+Back-Up+System/7842588.p?id=1142298456537&skuId=7842588 Provides surge protection for PC, dsl modem, coax; long battery runtime for a single home PC. Keeps the cordless phone base working during a storm along with a desk lamp so you're not in total darkness. They're great for the living room home theater system too. Allows you to watch the local weather during a storm when the power is out. > I do have one at work, but even there most desktop systems aren't > on it. The only reason that my desktop system uses the UPS is that > my cubicle is on raised floor inside the computer room and I > connected it myself. Most desktop users, even at the office, are not > so privileged. And my employer is a very big entity, financially. > It's not a small business. In the U.S. most business facilities have more stable power than residential areas. Most offices have transformers inside the building and buried cable to the building, unlike residential which, if not fairly new, has all above ground cabling and multiple houses on one transformer up on a power pole. The latter is a magnet for falling tree limbs due to wind in the summer and ice in the winter. Most offices don't suffer from browns and sags due to having dedicated transformers. Usually when office power goes out it's due to a major component failure at a substation or an overhead line somewhere in between that got clipped by a boom truck or the like. In short, office desktops usually don't need a UPS, especially if user data is stored on network shares on UPS backed servers. If power goes out it just garbles local temp files--unless it's a Windows PC and the registry was held open, as it usually is, even though it's not supposed to be... Anyway, the way I've always looked at the residential side of the UPS debate is to ask myself this question: Is it worth spending $100 to surge and power backup protect my $1000 PC and printer? For me that answer is an emphatic yes. -- Stan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4bd9a53c.50...@hardwarefreak.com
